GM

General Motors' self-driving technology has been detailed in a letter from the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. In it we see details about the automaker's autonomous features, including a facial recognition system that monitors the driver's face for signs of issues like falling asleep or distraction. The letter highlights features related to GM's Super Cruise system, as well as one note of caution about it.

Services like Uber and Lyft may be dominating the ride-hailing market, but there's still a growing number of options for those who don't own cars but need to use one on occasion. One such is Maven, the car-sharing service owned by General Motors, which has just announced an expansion into another major US city: Los Angeles. Maven just recently rolled into San Francisco, making this its second California market.

There is a lot for EV shoppers to be excited about with the Chevy Bolt EV. The vehicle has a 238-mile EPA estimated driving range and will start at $37,495 before any state or federal tax incentives on the purchase of an electric vehicle are figured in. The only piece of the puzzle outstanding as far as Bolt hopefuls are concerned is when would the Bolt would land in dealerships and where would they be available to purchase.

GM is initiating a big recall of almost 4.3 million vehicles, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, due to potential issues with both seat belts and airbags. Both safety features are prone to failure because of a potential issue with a sensing diagnostic module, with that module possibly activating a test that could keep the airbag and seat belts from working properly. Affected vehicles range from the 2014 to 2017 model years.

Just a week ago it was reported that Lyft, the US's second largest ride-hailing company, turned down an acquisition offer from investor General Motors. But new details from the New York Times say that Lyft has actually been looking for a buyer for several months now, holding discussions with a number of companies, including Apple, Amazon, Google, GM, China's Didi Chuxing, and even main rival Uber, but failing to make any deals.

General Motors recently told Lyft that it is interested in acquiring the ridesharing company. Though Lyft at least briefly considered it — and went on to look into other potential acquirers, as well — it ultimately turned GM away. This is according to a pair of sources who cropped up recently; while they don’t know how much General Motors was looking to pay, it is worth pointing out that GM has already invested heavily in Lyft, having shelled out $500 million to get a 9-percent stake in the company several months ago.

GM's real-world autonomous car research has spread to another city, with Cruise Automation's self-driving Bolt EVs now tackling the streets of Scottsdale, Arizona. The electric cars, which have been retrofitted with various sensors, laser scanners, and other onboard smarts to replace a human driver, had previously been plying the tarmac in San Francisco, California.

General Motors has slammed the brakes on sales of several of its large SUVs, after discovering economy figures had been misrepresented. Sales of vehicles wearing Chevrolet, GMC, and Buick nameplates have been put on hold - affecting almost 60,000 cars - after it was realized that the EPA numbers were higher than they ought to be.

Lyft will trial autonomous taxi service with a fleet of self-driving Chevrolet Bolt EVs within the next twelve months, it's reported, as GM accelerates its car tech research. The automaker and the ride-sharing firm announced back in January that they had plans to collaborate on self-driving cars, with the eventual goal being an on-demand, autonomous vehicle network that could be summoned from a smartphone.

This hasn't been a good week for car recalls. So far we've seen Tesla, Bugatti, and BMW recall a large number of vehicles, collectively. Not to mention all of the faulty airbags that Takata has been trying to address. And now GM is recalling more than a million trucks, due to an issue with the seat belt.

Not content to beat the Tesla Model 3 to market, GM is proving to be liberal with the auto-industry snark as its execs talk up the rapidly approaching Chevrolet Bolt. Though General Motors has been quiet in the aftermath of Tesla's astonishing hundreds of thousands of reservations for the Model 3, set to be the most affordable car in the electric automaker's line-up, one vice president couldn't help a little push back today.

Alexa, the personification of Amazon's still odd Echo canister, isn't exactly a household name compared to the likes of Siri or even Cortana, but it's slowly getting there. Amazon is slowly but surely not only expanding support for its voice-controlled assistant, it has even expanded the devices that bear it. Then, there are the numerous hobbyist hacks and experiments that make Echo a tad more interesting. Like this almost convoluted a certain Jryanishere used to, in the end, get Alexa to start up his GM car at his (verbal) command.